10 Restaurant Salads You Should Avoid

Here are 10 of the unhealthiest restaurant salads that you will ever find on the menu.

Ordering a salad when dining out can be a healthy alternative to most dishes that are offered on the menu. Salads are a good way to get the vegetables you need for a balanced diet. Unfortunately, there are some salads that can be worse than eating a burger and fries. Here are 10 unhealthy restaurant salads that you should avoid.

Olive Garden

Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad

850 calories

64g fat

1880mg sodium

This salad has grilled chicken over romaine in a creamy Caesar dressing with parmesan cheese and croutons. The creamy Caesar dressing is what raises the fat content to 64g. Skipping the dressing would lower the fat and sodium content significantly.

Del Taco

Deluxe Taco Salad

845 calories

47g fat

2470mg sodium

Choosing a taco salad at a fast food restaurant is usually a bad idea. Most taco salads have a generous amount of refried beans in them and that is what elevates the level of sodium. This one has enough sodium for an entire day for the average adult.

Chili’s

Quesadilla Explosion Salad

1300 calories

87g fat

2050mg sodium

There are many items on the Chili’s menu that can wreck your diet. If you think that choosing a salad over the other offerings will help you, then you are wrong. This salad has grilled chicken with cheese, corn relish, tomatoes, cilantro, cheese quesadilla wedges, tortilla strips, and citrus-balsamic dressing. There is almost a day and a half worth of fat in this salad.

Cheesecake Factory

Caesar Salad With Chicken

1510 calories

1453mg sodium

Cheesecake Factory makes it difficult to find out the nutritional content of their food and this is one of the reasons. Almost every one of their menu items is high in calories and it boggles the mind that a single restaurant salad could have over 1500 calories.

Macaroni Grill

Market Chop Salad

1020 calories

2400mg sodium

Macaroni Grill has many items that are contains rich sauces and high sodium contents. This salad contains roasted turkey, pepperoni, artichoke, provolone, balsamic vinaigrette, and pumpkin seeds. This is a combination that creates a lot of calories and high sodium content.

On The Border

Grande Taco Salad w/ground beef

1280 calories

85g fat

2250mg sodium

Any item that has “Grande” in the title should be a red flag. It has all the typical ingredients that you would find in a taco salad. The problem is that they increase the portion to a real gut-buster.

IHOP

Crispy Chicken Salad

1460 calories

95g fat

2090mg sodium

IHOP is famous for their breakfast menu but they also serve lunch and dinner. This salad packs in 95g of fat. If you think the grilled chicken would be a better way to go, it has 2420mg of sodium.

California Pizza Kitchen

Waldorf Chicken Salad with Blue Cheese dressing

1347 calories

1994mg sodium

California Pizza Kitchen may be famous for their pizzas but they also serve a large variety of salads. This one contains chicken, grapes, apples, candied walnuts, celery, and lettuce. All of these are acceptable choices for a salad, it is the blue cheese dressing that racks up the calories.

Applebees

Bruschetta Chicken Salad

1110 calories

66g fat

3120mg sodium

The Bruschetta Chicken Salad contains grilled chicken breast, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, champagne vinaigrette, red peppers, Kalamata olives, Asiago cheese, fried mozzarella, and balsamic glaze. That is a lot of ingredients to pile into a salad. The cheese really adds to the high sodium count on this one.

Chevys Fresh Mex

Steak Tostada Salad

1560 calories

100g fat

2550mg sodium

This is one of the unhealthiest salads that you can find at a restaurant. It does not contain anything that you don’t normally find in a taco salad, but the way it is prepared has turned this into a culinary nightmare. It is hard to imagine that one salad could contain 1560 calories and 100g of fat.

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